Terry Woods and his brother Bob are true believers in superchargers. So much so that back in the early '60s, Terry stuffed a Paxton-supercharged 312ci Y-block Ford in a '56 Merc and terrorized the streets with a blow-through Holley carburetor. Today he and brother Bob are big Mopar fans, but they've lost none of their enthusiasm for centrifugal supercharging. Terry's background is in engineering, so he's always known that while Roots blowers are big on visual impact, they suffer a little in the efficiency department. When big centrifugals began bulging the marketplace, the brothers were thrilled. But none of the blower companies wanted to build specific drive kits for Mopars. That's when The Supercharger Store was created in Huachuca City, Arizona, with the brothers building supercharger kits for Mopars, big-block Fords, and big-block Buicks.

2/7

Using supercharger-induced pressure to push air and fuel into the cylinders is an easy way to make more power. But blowers also heat the air they pressurize, which not only reduces the air density, but also makes the engine prone to detonation. That's why blower motors need high-octane fuel. The problem with race gas is that it's a quickly consumable commodity at $6 or more per gallon. So when E85 (85 percent ethanol/alcohol mixed with 15 percent gasoline) arrived in Arizona, the brothers saw the light of a golden opportunity. This E85 stuff offered an octane rating of 105 at roughly half the price of race gas, since in southeastern Arizona the cost of E85 was a mere $2.43 per gallon.

So now we need to introduce the car. Terry found this Charger back in 1997 and eventually stuffed a low-compression 440 in it with the eventual plan of bolting on a centrifugal supercharger. It soon became the company's test mule for various accessory-drive configurations for ATI superchargers. After E85 appeared in Arizona, it just made sense to try this new fuel in the car. So now, all three of these concepts-the car, the supercharger, and the right fuel-came together to create a potential that just could not be ignored. The brothers bolted in a giant 32-gallon ATL E85 fuel cell in the trunk, plumbed it with a high-capacity MagnaFuel fuel pump and -10 feed lines, and then worked with their friends at Performance Carburetors to use a modified 750 annular-discharge carburetor that would accommodate E85's greater volume demands.

4/7

With the conversion complete, they took the Charger to Xact Dyno in Tempe, Arizona, to do a straight-up comparison using Xact's hydraulically loaded Dynapack, which bolts to the rear axles, eliminating tire slippage as a variable. The test consisted of running the Charger on both pump gasoline and E85 at the same boost level to compare the power output. The accompanying graph illustrates the difference in power especially along the torque curve, where differentials of 30 lb-ft of torque or more between 3,400 and 4,800 were the norm. Studying the air/fuel ratio curves later revealed that both the gasoline and E85 mixture levels were on the rich side, but the power differential was still clearly evident. Terry and Bob are confident that this amount of torque along with a conservative 25hp improvement at the top of the curve is due mainly to E85's ability to cool the incoming charge.

5/7

Terry believes that if the engine were optimized by bumping the static compression from 8.8:1 to 10.0:1 or more, the power curve would clearly benefit. Part of the reason for this is that in addition to the use of E85, the brothers also equipped this 440 with a complete water-injection system that includes a 5-gallon reservoir, a high-quality, high-pressure pump, and The Supercharger Store's own spray nozzle designed to inject the water as a fine mist directly into the inlet side of the supercharger. Doing so introduces the water as far upstream as possible to produce the most reduction of inlet-air temperature. This takes advantage of something called the latent heat of vaporization of water. When vaporized, water can remove roughly four to six times the amount of heat from the inlet-air temperature compared to gasoline, and when combined with E85, this inlet-air cooling improves even more. As an example, during the chassis dyno testing, the gasoline-fed and water-injected combination saw an inlet-air temperature of 173 degrees F at 15.8 psi of boost in the intake manifold, while the E85 combo registered a mere 109 degrees F at 15.5 psi. That's a huge difference, especially when you consider that there is a 1 percent potential power increase with every 10-degree decrease in temperature. This is probably where the power increase originated.

6/7

The reason that water injection works so well is because not only does it reduce the inlet air temperature, but the proper amount of water also reduces the peak cylinder pressures to prevent detonation. Terry feels that the combination of E85's strong octane rating along with a properly designed water-injection system could potentially sustain boost levels as high as 20 psi in their Mopar motor without having to compromise total ignition timing.

7/7

The final evaluation was a full dragstrip blast at Southwest International Raceway in Tucson, where the 4,300-plus-pound Charger ran a solid 11.20 pass. But because the Charger doesn't have a rollbar, the track wasn't thrilled with allowing more than one run. Think about that: Here's a massively heavy Mopar running low 11s at a track located in the high desert on pump gas ethanol with a little squirt of water mixed in. It puts a whole new perspective on the term "alcohol abuse," doesn't it?

Where: Huachuca City, Arizona, where the average humidity hovers in the single digits most of the year.

Engine: The Charger originally had a 318 that got the boot when Terry ran across a Police Interceptor 440 out of a '72 cop car. Terry was living in Iowa at the time and had a Cedar Rapids machine shop rebuild the wedge with its original forged steel crank and Six-Pack rods, adding forged 8.8:1 compression TRW pistons and a Mopar Purple Stripe single-pattern cam with 284 advertised duration and 0.528 inch of valve lift. Terry also resurrected the stock iron heads with some simple pocket porting along with stainless steel 2.14/1.81-inch valves.

Induction: Terry chose a Mopar Performance single-plane M1 intake and a 750-cfm Performance Carburetors Stage II blow-through carb for the gasoline testing, and then switched to a similar PC Stage II carb modified for E85. Both gas and alcohol carbs use annular-discharge boosters that create a much better fuel curve under boost. ProCharger rates the F-1 blower at a maximum of 1,525 cfm and 38 psi, but Terry hasn't turned the wick up that high yet. Most of his testing has been at a more sedate 15 psi. The Extreme Velocity air hat is also worth some power. Big airflow numbers require a good fuel pump, so the nod went to a MagnaFuel ProStar 300 pump for the E85. For gasoline testing, Terry switched to a ProTuner 625 pump. The blow-through carb also requires a boost-referencing MagnaFuel pressure regulator.

Exhaust: The hot gases are directed through a 2.00-inch primary pipe-diameter set of TTI headers plumbed into a 3-inch exhaust system with DynoMax mufflers.

Powertrain: Behind all this power is a simple 727 TorqueFlite automatic with a Turbo Action Cheetah valvebody, a B&M shifter, a Mopar Performance torque converter, and a Mark Williams driveshaft connected to an 831/44 rearend assembly sporting a Sure Grip limited slip, a set of 3.91 gears, and Moser Engineering axles.

Wheels/Tires: Did we mention the stock front wheels and tires? No? Good. In the rear Terry set up a pair of 275/60R15 BFGoodrich Drag Radials mounted on steel wheels.

Body: The main changes to the body are strictly for safety, with a Lakewood driveshaft loop and, of course, that massive 32-gallon fuel cell for E85 in the Mopar's trunk. Try that in a 'Cuda.

Interior: The less said about the interior, the better.

Power: On E85 with water injection, this iron-headed 440 has made 576 rwhp and 710 lb-ft of rear-wheel torque at a pinion tooth-bending 3,500 rpm.

Performance: Let's start with the fact that this Mopar weighs an Imperialistic 4,256 pounds. What makes the B-Body's 11.20-at 120-mph pass at Southwest International Raceway in Tucson even more amazing is that the track sits at an altitude of 3,075 feet above sea level.

Thanks: Bob and Terry want to thank Performance Carburetors (performance carburetors.com), MagnaFuel (magnafuel.com), Extreme Velocity (superiorairflow.com), and Xact Dyno (xactdyno.com) for their help in testing the E85 fuel on the Charger.